Define Signatures in ERDAS

INTRODUCTION

The ERDAS IMAGINE Signature Editor allows you to create, manage, evaluate and edit signatures
(.sig extension).
In this section is explained how you can collect signatures from the image to be classified using the
area of interest (AOI) tools
This is first step of part 4 of the exercise land cover mapping with satellite image.
The instructions are based on ERDAS IMAGINE 2016.

INSTRUCTIONS

• ERDAS IMAGINE must be running

• The satellite image to be classified is displayed in the active viewer

1. Open the Signature Editor from Raster/Classification/Supervised

2. Select the areas in an image to be used as a signature and zoom-in. One option to collect
signature is by delineating a polygon of the selected area.

3. From the Contextual Tab Drawing/Insert geometry choose Polygon . An AOI layer is now
created. In the Viewer, draw a polygon around the area you just magnified. Middle-click or
double-click to close the polygon. After the AOI is created, a bounding box surrounds the
polygon, indicating that it is currently selected.

4. In the Signature Editor, click the Create New Signature(s) from AOI icon or select Edit |
Add from the menu bar to add this AOI as a signature. Change name and color for the
selected item.
Under Count you see the number of pixels, which are sampled. In order to use the maximum
likelihood classifier, theoretically you need n+1 pixels for each class (n = no. of bands).
Verify also that there is a cross in the cell in the I column. This column identifies whether or not the
covariance matrix can be inverted. This is necessary for such functions as maximum likelihood and
divergence. It is not editable. If the standard deviation is zero than no cross will appear and nothing
can be assigned to this class, using the maximum likelihood.
Continue and select more signatures.
For other more methods to Define signatures see Workflows/ Classification Workflows.